


A History of Violence

by Dragunov



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-15
Updated: 2012-05-15
Packaged: 2017-11-05 10:05:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/405209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dragunov/pseuds/Dragunov
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Organized crime speaks in two languages.<br/></p>
            </blockquote>





	A History of Violence

**Author's Note:**

> bbllaah this is shit now fuck early fics but I am not deleting it anyway because there are bits I liked

Organized crime speaks in two languages.

Violence and money.

When it came to violence and money, Sebastian Moran knew that there were never errors in translation. No matter what country he was in, when he took a long, thin knife to a man's face and carved the skin off as if it were a roast, the message was clear.

Money was much the same. Jim threw money like it was confetti, but for all his crazed smiles and seemingly impulsive purchases, the designer suits, the sports cars, it was just a part of the calculation. Sebastian picked up politicians in the Aston Marton and drove them to meet Jim, who was dressed in sleek Westwood, waiting for them at the luxurious penthouse overlooking central London.

Without words, the deal was done. 

What they saw spun around in their wide, greedy eyes, and they wanted what they saw. They groveled and accepted Jim's meager bribes. They put a stop to honest investigations, they passed dirty laws, they let men die; they sold their souls to the devil, all for a little flash and glimmer.

And as soon as they stepped out of line, as soon as they started to feel buried alive, as if the guilt was suffocating them, Sebastian was there, standing at the edge of the park where their children played. Casually cleaning the red from beneath his nails. Smile like a curved blade. With a neighborly suggestion,  _don't be stupid, now_.

_Stupid doesn't pay you. **You**   **pay**  for stupid._

Money and violence, it was that simple. Like baking a pie. Add four and twenty blackbirds, shove a couple of mouths full of money to make them silent, and beat the nose off a maid. It bored Jim to tears.

Sebastian was content. 

The secret services functioned a lot like organized crime. Back when Sebastian was a spy for Mycroft Holmes, he occasionally worried the Iceman senseless with how purely  _happy_  he was. And at his last routine evaluation before turning traitor, he told the psychologists to write that he wasn't a spy for the money, and the psychologists, vaguely aware of his relationship with Mycroft, assumed that love was the motive.

Mycroft ought to have seen the betrayal coming. He was no fool: if not money, then by deduction there was only one other option. But maybe Mycroft averted his eyes to the evidence out of love. Forgot, for Sebastian, that caring was not an advantage. He was a Holmes, after all. He definitely saw the signs.

He saw the way Sebastian's skin shivered with goosebumps as he grabbed a suspected terrorist by the throat and tightened his fingers. The way he bit his bottom lip, almost sexually, and grinned as his favorite drug, scopolamine, robbed men of their free will, forcing them to spill confessions at the first cut, letting Sebastian slaughter them like dazed cows. Mycroft saw that it was excess. That Sebastian was no longer the boy he knew at Eton, the childhood friend, the lover. He saw the monster. He fed the monster.

He saw that each time he and Sebastian had sex, Sebastian was less and less satisfied. 

He saw that the blood was Sebastian's rapture. And for whatever reason, Mycroft refused to believe what he saw. He turned his back.

"Men rarely see the whole of reality. It's too painful for them." Jim said, pulling on a pair of jeans. He tugged at his ridiculous briefs until they were barely visible above the waist. He looked at Sebastian in the reflection of their bedroom mirror with tired, reddened eyes. "Mycroft Holmes is a man made of ice, but he's still a man."

Eventually, a few government sanctioned interrogations weren't enough, and begging on his knees Sebastian sought out a war where the blood was endless. Jim Moriarty seized him. Brought him back to his feet. Raised him to the left hand of hell, where he belonged. He shot men from far away. Tortured them face to face. And afterward, the blood still fresh, hot, he took Moriarty to bed and the violence continued. Moriarty claimed him.

But it bored Jim to tears.

It started with the IT job, the jeans and the morgue girlfriend and the reddened eyes that Sebastian gave him and playing gay, as he put it. Then Jim began to let the organization slip, slowly, all in the name of the game, the desire to watch Sherlock dance. They lost money to Sherlock Holmes. Thirty million quid at first, then more. They lost reputation to Sherlock. But Jim gained a glint in his eyes. Sebastian saw. And the more and more that glint grew, the less and less satisfied he was with Sebastian, and Sebastian knew.

For whatever reason he refused to believe it.

On the rooftop, Moriarty spoke to Sherlock in the language of violence. Three bullets. Three gunmen. Three victims. There's no stopping them now. It was an easy exchange:  _your friends will die if you don't._

Except there was an error in the translation.

Sherlock jumped.

And Jim Moriarty

shot himself

in the mouth

and died.

Another aspect of organized crime is self-perpetuation, the ability to persist through time beyond the lives of its leaders. As soon as the word spread that Jim was dead, the firm fell to Sebastian Moran, and somewhere in Whitehall, Mycroft Holmes slid a file across his desk in the direction of his still living brother. 

Sherlock lifted the file, saw the minute flinch of pain at the corner of Mycroft's lips, and in a private moment of brotherly love, he strained. "I know that he was-"  
  
"No." Mycroft said, letting his head fall to his hands. "This must be done."

Three years later, Sebastian is still unsure what to say, the language of money and violence having failed him, the taste of Jim faded from his lips, the shadow of Sherlock Holmes stalking their old organization, but as he assembles his rifle  within vantage of 221 B Baker Street, as he strokes the barrell and anticipates the bruise of recoil, he manages one last message to send. One bullet. One man. 


End file.
